Lucas Krull playing like ‘first-round material’ this spring

[Pitt2006]

Krull made Patti look decent and at least gives hope that he can fulfill the need at TE. Narduzzi I hope is a poor man's Hamilton at FSU. Mediocre, but not awful for a long while. Then slowly gets better with recruiting and results. I don't think you sell to a better coach to come here after firing Narduzzi for basically being slightly above average. Nowhere near great, but we don't want the Stallings of football.

 

[Parkview57]

Nowhere near great, but we don't want the Stallings of football.

BAN SEARCH FIRMS!!!

 

[cashisking884]

If he wins 9 this year that would be an impressive feat IMO and would go a long way with the non-believers. 8 wins would be meh but enough to keep him around to see what he does without a 4 year starter at QB. Anything less than 8 show him the door, no apologies no excuses.

For that 9 wins to happen, there can't be much of a dropoff on D, and the O has to be a whole lot better, starting with the OL. A couple of pretty tall orders. That O had beeter figure out a way to get the ball in the end zone a lot more than it has the past few years.

As usual with Pitt football of the past 30 years, the smart play is to keep your expectations low and hope to have them exceeded.

As for the Krull "looking like a first rounder" comment, we've all heard that kind of thing from the Dooz many times before. Doesn't mean a thing until the games are played.

The schedule has a lot of wins on it. What are we asking him to do this far into his regime to get to 9 wins? Beat a Tenn. team trying to pull out of a tailspin that had anybody worth a damn transfer? Win the 50-50 games against UVA and VT?

Narduzzi is looking at a guaranteed loss to Clemson, and very likely losses to Miami and UNC. Unless GT really turns a corner, and I guess it could with the new influx of transfers, but unless that happens, there’s really only two 50-50 games the rest of the season. The rest should be either likely wins or outright blowouts.

He doesn’t need some elite coaching season or miracle to win 9 regular season games.

 

[cashisking884]

Krull made Patti look decent and at least gives hope that he can fulfill the need at TE. Narduzzi I hope is a poor man's Hamilton at FSU. Mediocre, but not awful for a long while. Then slowly gets better with recruiting and results. I don't think you sell to a better coach to come here after firing Narduzzi for basically being slightly above average. Nowhere near great, but we don't want the Stallings of football.

Putting aside most everything else, the biggest problem with Narduzzi as HC is offense. Today’s game is about turning it into a track meet. You have to be able to answer offensive shot for offensive shot. If you can’t, you’re only ever going to be so good, and probably never going to have payoff, special seasons that allow you to tolerate the meh ones.

There’s little to no evidence Narduzzi has the team structured for that or that we will ever move in that direction under him. Offense continues to look behind everybody else, both in scheme and talent under him.

 

[thebadby2]

The schedule has a lot of wins on it. What are we asking him to do this far into his regime to get to 9 wins? Beat a Tenn. team trying to pull out of a tailspin that had anybody worth a damn transfer? Win the 50-50 games against UVA and VT?

Narduzzi is looking at a guaranteed loss to Clemson, and very likely losses to Miami and UNC. Unless GT really turns a corner, and I guess it could with the new influx of transfers, but unless that happens, there’s really only two 50-50 games the rest of the season. The rest should be either likely wins or outright blowouts.

He doesn’t need some elite coaching season or miracle to win 9 regular season games.

Agree with most of that, but 9 wins, any way he gets them, against any schedule would be a big improvement.

i sure hope VT isn't a 50/50 as that roster and program are in a shambles and we crushed them last year. That would be a really bad loss for Nards. UVA isn't much better although they are returning a bunch of upperclassmen from the crappy team they fielded last year. Those are teams Nards has to beat IMO. Hard to claim progress if you can't beat teams like that in year 7. Tennessee is a wild card so not sure how to call that one.

 

[cashisking884]

Agree with most of that, but 9 wins, any way he gets them, against any schedule would be a big improvement.

i sure hope VT isn't a 50/50 as that roster and program are in a shambles and we crushed them last year. That would be a really bad loss for Nards. UVA isn't much better although they are returning a bunch of upperclassmen from the crappy team they fielded last year. Those are teams Nards has to beat IMO. Hard to claim progress if you can't beat teams like that in year 7. Tennessee is a wild card so not sure how to call that one.

But that’s because he’s set the bar so low. He shouldn’t get to set expectations, we should.
In the end, people on this board have been begging for a schedule with a bunch of wins baked into it. We now have that schedule. It shouldn’t be seen as some Herculean feat if we accomplish exactly what people would say would happen if we had that kind of schedule. It should be expected. That’s the point of the schedule.

 

[#99HUGHgreen]

If he wins 9 this year that would be an impressive feat IMO and would go a long way with the non-believers. 8 wins would be meh but enough to keep him around to see what he does without a 4 year starter at QB. Anything less than 8 show him the door, no apologies no excuses.

For that 9 wins to happen, there can't be much of a dropoff on D, and the O has to be a whole lot better, starting with the OL. A couple of pretty tall orders. That O had beeter figure out a way to get the ball in the end zone a lot more than it has the past few years.

As usual with Pitt football of the past 30 years, the smart play is to keep your expectations low and hope to have them exceeded.

As for the Krull "looking like a first rounder" comment, we've all heard that kind of thing from the Dooz many times before. Doesn't mean a thing until the games are played.

RBs were pathetic for most of last season.

OL was really bad too and certainly contributed to the poor running game.

QB play was not great but likely would have been a little better with a better blocking and a better running game

TEs were non existent once Krull went down with an injury


I will feel a tad more optimistic about the offense can with a healthy Krull, but not buying any of this hype. We’ll believe he is elite when we see him be dominant in a real game coach.

I remember PN saying he thought the running game would be pretty good heading into last season and we saw how that turned out. How is it that so many fans could the running game was going to be mediocre the past two years and yet he could not.

When looking at Narduzzi's track record over the past 6 seasons along with RBs and an OL that may not be much better this year, it becomes a little hard to see how this season’s team gets better results.

Let’s just say it would an incredibly unexpected pleasant surprise if some more things fell into place this season and Pitt won 9 or more games.